On a new note, here's a true masterpiece of a video, a musical round sung/played on an apparent "triple" piano. https://youtu.be/HcRW3FMuttY

It's a 360° video, so best watched (in my experience) on the YouTube app on a device held in front of you, whilst sat on a swivel-chair with plenty of space. But it is most definitely worth it. The "making of" video is pretty awesome too.

You wouldn't want to film the Tsar Bomba test from less than ... umm ... well, there's a picture on Wikipedia taken from 161 km away. Also this:

The bomb was attached to an 800-kilogram parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time to fly about 45 kilometres (28 mi) away from ground zero, giving them a 50 percent chance of survival. When detonation occurred, the Tu-95V dropped one kilometer in the air because of the shock wave but was able to recover and land safely.

45km. You shouldn't hear it until 2 m 11 s after detonation, according to Google search bar.

It's possible they recorded audio and video separately and just put a few seconds delay in to make it seem real to the audience.

Goodbye corrupt MPs, and also some historic buildings and bridges, and you may not want to try flying into or out of Heathrow airport because it's covered in dust and grit over 1cm deep. Siesmic shaking barely noticeable in Tyneside, Anglesey and Cornwall. Viewed from 100km away, there's no fireball because I chose such a low impact velocity to make sure it'd reach the ground. Earthquake hits after 20 seconds. Dust arrives after 2.4 minutes. Air blast arrives after 5.05 minutes.

So, in theory, 1/100 the diameter is 1/1000000 the mass and sqr(1000000) is 1000 so 1 m diameter and 10000 km/s should give the same energy yield. It blows up. All you get is air blast after 5.82 minutes. That's 0.77 minutes longer because it blew up a long way up in the air. All it'd do is break a few windows near where it was aimed.

The only reason it makes sense is money. Nothing else about it is a good idea, really. It's bitumen, very toxic stuff. Pipelines break. It's running through a goddamn earthquake zone, toward coastal waters where it will fill tankers that are always run as cheaply as inhumanly possible. There will be spills, guarandamnteed, and the operating company will NOT pay for it all because they can buy legislators who will say they don't have to.

If anyone involved cared about anything more than their personal bank balance, they would either fork out for a refinery near the extraction sites or pipe the damn stuff eastward to feed the population hubs in Canada and the US. Or both.

(Obligatory disclaimer that I am at best half educated about this stuff, but still.)

The long-term plan for rehabilitating damaged resources has yet to be implemented a full quarter century after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spewing more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into the surrounding ecosystem.

According to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the U.S. Justice Department and State of Alaska say they are still waiting for long overdue scientific studies before collecting a final $92 million claim to implement the recovery plan for unanticipated harm to fish, wildlife and habitat.

Fast-forward seven years, and ExxonMobil, the most profitable publicly traded company in the world, has yet to pay up — in fact, they’ve been fighting the claims all along. Last year, Exxon failed to persuade a federal judge to bar the U.S. and Alaskan governments from pursuing further damage claims related to the 1989 spill. In his order, U.S. District Judge H. Russell Holland wrote, “Exxon presently suffers no particular harm. Its business is not in any fashion disrupted or impeded because of the uncertainty of a claim by the governments.”

According to PEER documents, “the U.S. Justice Department and Alaska cited ‘unforeseen contracting issues,’ delays in ‘sample analysis’ and stalled peer reviews as reasons why they have not begun implementing its ‘multi-phase restoration project’ outlined back in 2006.”

At least one of the companies whose attempts to move oil around has resulted in that oil making a ghastly mess of a coastline and making a lot of people very sick has spent more fighting the claims against them than it would have cost to settle them. From one point of view, if you think you can spend $1M fighting a $30M claim and have even a 5% chance of winning, that's a good bet, and if you've already spent $20M fighting it and think another $1M gives you a 5% chance of beating it, that's still a good bet ... but from another point of view, spending $50M to fight a $20M claim is worth it because admitting liability would leave you open to the $25M claim next time it happens, the $30M claim the time after that, the $40M claim the time after that, ...

If you know you're going to spill oil all over the place again and again, a precedent that you don't have to pay for the clean-up is a very valuable thing indeed.